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An Enormous Crime
The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia
This powerful and gripping story provides the history of American POW's left behind in Vietnam — including the first full account as to why they were left behind and what they have endured since.
The product of 25 years of research, An Enormous Crime tells the story of living American POWs held back by the North Vietnamese after “Operation Homecoming” in 1973. Some 700 POWs were unaccounted for — ultimately detained after the U.S. government reneged on a handwritten wartime promise. Based on declassified intelligence reports, satellite imagery, author interviews, and personal experience, this is a comprehensive account of a tumultuous period that blackened the eye of the United States.
Despite hundreds of postwar sightings and intelligence reports describing Americans being held captive throughout Vietnam and Laos, Washington did nothing. And despite numerous secret military signals and codes sent from the desperate POWs themselves, the Pentagon did not act. In 1988, a U.S. spy satellite passing over Sam Neua Province, Laos, spotted the 12-foot-tall letters “USA” and immediately beneath them a huge, highly classified Vietnam War-era code in a rice paddy in a narrow mountain valley. The letters “USA” appeared to have been dug out of the ground, while the code appeared to have been fashioned from rice straw.
Tragically, the brave men who constructed these codes have not yet come home.
The book draws to a close with a chapter on how newly elected President Bill Clinton — in spite of the emergence shortly after his inauguration of perhaps the most compelling evidence ever received by the U.S. Government that the Vietnamese had, in fact, withheld hundreds of American POWs at Operation Homecoming — normalized relations with Vietnam.
Bill Hendon, R-N.C., is a two-term congressman (1981-82, 1985-86). He served on the U.S. House POW/MIA Task Force during both terms. In 1991 and 1992, he served as a full-time intelligence investigator assigned to the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. He lives in Virginia. Elizabeth Stewart is an attorney and lives in Florida.
The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia
This powerful and gripping story provides the history of American POW's left behind in Vietnam — including the first full account as to why they were left behind and what they have endured since.
The product of 25 years of research, An Enormous Crime tells the story of living American POWs held back by the North Vietnamese after “Operation Homecoming” in 1973. Some 700 POWs were unaccounted for — ultimately detained after the U.S. government reneged on a handwritten wartime promise. Based on declassified intelligence reports, satellite imagery, author interviews, and personal experience, this is a comprehensive account of a tumultuous period that blackened the eye of the United States.
Despite hundreds of postwar sightings and intelligence reports describing Americans being held captive throughout Vietnam and Laos, Washington did nothing. And despite numerous secret military signals and codes sent from the desperate POWs themselves, the Pentagon did not act. In 1988, a U.S. spy satellite passing over Sam Neua Province, Laos, spotted the 12-foot-tall letters “USA” and immediately beneath them a huge, highly classified Vietnam War-era code in a rice paddy in a narrow mountain valley. The letters “USA” appeared to have been dug out of the ground, while the code appeared to have been fashioned from rice straw.
Tragically, the brave men who constructed these codes have not yet come home.
The book draws to a close with a chapter on how newly elected President Bill Clinton — in spite of the emergence shortly after his inauguration of perhaps the most compelling evidence ever received by the U.S. Government that the Vietnamese had, in fact, withheld hundreds of American POWs at Operation Homecoming — normalized relations with Vietnam.
Bill Hendon, R-N.C., is a two-term congressman (1981-82, 1985-86). He served on the U.S. House POW/MIA Task Force during both terms. In 1991 and 1992, he served as a full-time intelligence investigator assigned to the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. He lives in Virginia. Elizabeth Stewart is an attorney and lives in Florida.
